


Skeins

by Vehemently



Category: Fringe
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-07
Updated: 2013-04-07
Packaged: 2017-12-07 18:22:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,039
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/751589
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vehemently/pseuds/Vehemently
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Now imagine what Ravelry is like, in that universe.</p><p>Set at the end of Season 3.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Skeins

It happened so fast. Word must have got out almost immediately, because the first one arrived in less than an hour. She came up on the porch all shy and strange and rang the bell while we were at breakfast.

We opened the door to her and she didn't even say her name, just "Are they here?"

Honest to goodness, we thought she was talking about the two lost men they'd found. Isn't that what you'd think? That she was a wife or a sister or something? And then we got a look at her, that hopeful lonely look, and it didn't seem like she was looking for a lost husband at all.

"Is it really true?" she asked. "I heard it on call-in radio, WLLF down to Collington. Did you see them? Can I see them?" And then she burst into tears.

We sat her down and got her a cup of tea, what else do you do at a time like that. She picked up the edge of a crocheted afghan from off the back of the couch to wipe her eyes, and then looked at her hand and laughed and went back to crying. The doorbell rang again.

It was another woman, heart in her throat. She was in sweatpants and had forgotten her shoes, her car keys still in her hand. She couldn't even speak she was so choked up. We brought her into the front room and she and the first woman must have known each other. They fell to crying together and laughing at the same time. We put the kettle back on the stove, for nothing better to do.

That was how it went the whole morning. It was one woman at a time, sometimes two, and they all mentioned the radio, WLLF call-in, and then later WXKZ and the public station were talking about it as news. We ran out of seats in the front room and set chairs out on the porch, and finally we thought to call the sheriff and tell him what was going on.

"Well make them some coffee I guess," he said, because we elected him sheriff but we couldn't elect him much in the way of brains. "The federals got me tied up in knots, I can't send anybody except the school nurse for at least the next six hours."

We wanted to know what was going to happen. Of course the sheriff didn't know, or wouldn't tell. The one who discovered it was Juno Alvarez up the hill walking his slobbering mastiff that always does his business in the front yard, and he'd gone off with the federals and the two bewildered men, and we kind of wondered whether they'd be seen again, or whether that was going to be a contamination that they would have to seal off. It had never happened here before, but we'd heard the stories about downstate, same as everyone.

It seemed like a kindness not to mention that to the people in (and outside) the house. By about eight thirty it was sixteen women and one man, and though they all showed up afraid they fell to happy conversation once they got their yips out. We couldn't follow it at all, just catch a word here or there as they talked technical stuff: gauge and sizing and like that. One of them said, "I been scouring the Goodwill for months, but people snap up the old sweaters so fast now," and they all nodded their heads like it was a political meeting.

The cars were filling up the ditches on both sides of the road, like we were holding a yard sale or something. Soon enough it would be gawkers and people just come because everyone was come. We wondered about selling tickets, taking pictures, things like that. If we had our very own tourist attraction to bring a few jobs to good old Accord, New York.

At eight forty-five Lydia Raybell, professional busybody, showed up. She had a sweater buttoned around her neck but didn't have her arms in the sleeves, like you see in old pictures from the fifties. We thought, seeing her in her brown Buick, that she was coming to help relieve the crying and the tea, but no. She put that old tank in park and let out two other people and they come stomping up to the house, men in big muddy boots and heavy jackets and the kind of cap that you can tell is old because of all the greasy fingerprints on the bill.

"I heard," said Lydia, who was ordinarily running a bed and breakfast on the far side of town, or else making a fuss at an aldermen's meeting, "that you are the people to talk to." When Lydia wants something she usually gets her way. The two strange men stood behind her like her honor guard.

And it's fair to say that her determination firmed up all the rest. We were pretty sure most of the people at the house didn't know each other before that morning, or one or two of them did but mostly not, but with Lydia standing on the front porch like she owned it suddenly they all figured out a purpose and a direction and there it was.

"We'd like to see them now," said one of the early women, someone who'd gotten here when there was still orange juice in the house.

Lydia said, "You'll take us to them. We need to see them now."

We didn't know what to do, honestly. "But the sheriff said. There might be containment --"

"The sheriff is a great big boob, and you can tell him I said that." said Lydia, and pushed us aside. On our own front porch! She just walked into the house like it was hers, and the two men from away paused and wiped their boots on the edge-boards, awkward. They didn't enter but we went and chased Lydia into the front room. She was rounding up the ladies, who were crowded on the couch comparing the afghan with one of the old doilies from off the back of the Barcalounger, that had probably been there untouched for forty years. I swear, the manners on these people.

With Lydia barking encouragement they all got to their feet, and that seemed to occasion another wave of tears for some. They had all the tissue boxes in the house by then, and took a few on their way out the back to tuck up their sleeves. The first woman who arrived, gosh, she'd been there two hours, she folded up the afghan and then handed it to us like it was a baby.

So off they went, and we followed, mostly to see if the federals would have the gall to glue up Lydia Raybell into a containment field. It was her and three women from Collington at the front, and a gaggle of people straggling up the hill. There were a couple of squeals and cheers, like there was a brass band out in the grass playing them along, that only they could hear. The two strange men who had come up with Lydia were near the back, quiet, hands in their pockets. Truthfully, they seemed a little bit out of place.

We walked with them because it didn't seem so strange to walk with them. They were wearing the right kind of shoes for a hilly field in March.

"Do you know what breed? What kind I mean?" one of them asked, but we didn't know.

The wind was chilly and we wanted that tea right then, oh yes. It was almost half a mile to the top of the low ridge, most of that already trespassing on Juno Alvarez's property, though he tore down all the old electric fencing years ago. Out of the east, out of the rising sun in our faces, that crisp wind was half promise of the spring to come, and half baleful reminder of the winter just ending. Truthfully, we were a little afraid of what we would see on the other side of the hill.

That way that hills are, we came to the top without realizing it till we looked down and saw the paddock gray-green below us. In bunches across a couple hundred yards, the sheep stood there eating the grass, like animals do. They'd been blatting and shitting earlier, pardon our French, all huddled close for safety and their eyes wild, but everyone always said they were stupid creatures and here they were, three hours on, completely forgot what they'd been through.

The men who'd come with Lydia gasped beside us. One of them fell to his knees. The other, he was older, he just stood there with his hands in his pockets and bit his lips, and his shoulders shook a lot. We looked away. It seemed like the kind thing to do.

The other people who'd come to our house were scattering down the hill, some of them walking but a few out front trying to run in the tall grass. They trailed laughter, or maybe more crying, behind them. There was one federal down at the other end of the flock, definitely not wearing the right kind of boots, and he looked like he'd been poleaxed.

Which was just as well. Better than him losing his head and shooting people or something. The fact there was only one guard and not a whole van of people in riot gear meant things were probably not dangerous. We've never seen it ourselves, but we heard the stories about downstate, same as everyone.

"I wisht we'd brought Lady," said the man on his knees beside us. "God, how she'd run after them." The man standing next to him just grunted, probably did not have a hold of his voice at that moment.

We guessed or hoped that Lady was a dog. We still didn't know where these men had come from, or how Lydia had got ahold of them and hauled them to our house.

The women were touching the animals, stroking their backs and hugging their necks. Then we realized that they were pulling their fingers through the wool, you know, tugging at the wool to work it loose. They were collecting great balls of it that they mashed together and tucked into purses and pockets and whatall. Lucky for them, the sheep had appeared in March, instead of June or whenever sheep had used to get sheared.

"Come on Mike," said the man standing next to us. He leaned down and slapped his friend on the shoulder. The other one stood up and looking at them we suddenly realized they were related, father and son, two squints just the same in two weathered faces. Their ears and noses were red, but they didn't notice. Mike yanked his father on the arm like a little kid and they were off down the hill as well, agile in their boots. They got into the flock and went to look at the little tags on their ears, and the state of their teeth, not like the women who were still grabbing after hanks of wool.

The sheep didn't really seem to care, truth be told. They chewed in that placid way, the way that somebody at the dinner table might chew on macaroni when listening to a boring complaint, and let the people exclaim over them as if it were their due.

Well, you could say it is. The five hundred head that appeared in Accord at 6:02 AM today are the only domesticated sheep on the planet these past ten years. The federals have already called in other federals about it, a branch that doesn't carry guns on their hips. There's a bunch of ambulance-chasers want to talk to us, make sure we know our rights, though everyone you ask could tell you they're on Juno Alvarez's land, not ours. Somebody from the National Geographic just called, and wanted to talk about taking pictures after all. We said they could come and stay with us, as Lydia's bed and breakfast was going to be busy for a little while.


End file.
